The Django Project isn’t a legal entity. The Django Software Foundation, a
non-profit organization, handles financial and legal matters related to the
Django Project. Other than that, the Django Software Foundation lets the
Django Project manage the development of the Django framework, its ecosystem
and its community.

The Django core team makes the decisions, nominates its new members, and
elects its technical board. While it holds decision power in theory, it aims
at using it as rarely as possible in practice. Rough consensus should be the
norm and formal voting an exception.

The core team is the group of trusted volunteers who manage the Django
Project. They assume many roles required to achieve the project’s goals,
especially those that require a high level of trust. They make the decisions
that shape the future of the project.

Core team members are expected to act as role models for the community and
custodians of the project, on behalf of the community and all those who rely
on Django.

They will intervene, where necessary, in online discussions or at official
Django events on the rare occasions that a situation arises that requires
intervention.

They have authority over the Django Project infrastructure, including the
Django Project website itself, the Django GitHub organization and
repositories, the Trac bug tracker, the mailing lists, IRC channels, etc.

Core team members may participate in formal votes, typically to nominate new
team members and to elect the technical board.

Some contributions don’t require commit access. Depending on the reasons why a
contributor joins the team, they may or may not have commit permissions to the
Django code repository.

However, should the need arise, any team member may ask for commit access by
writing to the core team’s mailing list. Access will be granted unless the
person withdraws their request or the technical board vetoes the proposal.

Core team members who have commit access are referred to as “committers” or
“core developers”.

Other permissions, such as access to the servers, are granted to those who
need them through the same process.

Core team membership acknowledges sustained and valuable efforts that align
well with the philosophy and the goals of the Django Project.

It is granted by a four fifths majority of votes cast in a core team vote and
no veto by the technical board.

Core team members are always looking for promising contributors, teaching them
how the project is managed, and submitting their names to the core team’s vote
when they’re ready. If you would like to join the core team, you can contact a
core team member privately or ask for guidance on the Django Core
Mentorship mailing-list.

There’s no time limit on core team membership. However, in order to provide
the general public with a reasonable idea of how many people maintain Django,
core team members who have stopped contributing are encouraged to declare
themselves as “past team members”. Those who haven’t made any non-trivial
contribution in two years may be asked to move themselves to this category,
and moved there if they don’t respond. Past team members lose their privileges
such as voting rights and commit access.

Making major technical decisions when no consensus is found otherwise. This
happens on the django-developers mailing-list.

Veto a grant of commit access or remove commit access. This happens on the
django-core mailing-list.

In both cases, the technical board is a last resort. In these matters, it
fulfills a similar function to the former Benevolent Dictators For Life.

When the board wants to exercise one of these prerogatives, it must hold a
private, simple majority vote on the resolution. The quorum is the full
committee — each member must cast a vote or abstain explicitly. Then the board
communicates the result, and if possible the reasons, on the appropriate
mailing-list. There’s no appeal for such decisions.

In addition, at its discretion, the technical board may act in an advisory
capacity on non-technical decisions.